Say Tell Speak Talk Whats the difference
Vanessa: Hi, I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Say, tell, speak, talk, how can I use them
correctly?
Well, today we’re going to talk about it.
What did you say?
I didn’t tell you that.
You’re speaking too quietly.
Okay, let’s talk about it.
Can you accurately use say, tell, speak, and
talk?
Well, today I hope that by the end of this
lesson you’ll feel more comfortable about
how to accurately use them in daily conversation.
The first pair that we’re going to talk about
is say, and tell.
Let’s start with say.
Say is often used for reported speech.
This means that you can imagine you are a
reporter, you are a journalist, and you’re
telling someone what happened, what someone
else said.
Dan: Breaking news, Vanessa said to study
English every day.
Breaking News, Vanessa said to study English
every day.
Vanessa: Here, you saw reporter Dan reporting
to you using reported speech, and he used
the word said.
Vanessa said to study every day.
By the way, that’s great advice, study every
day.
But previously, I have said something, I said
study every day, and he’s reporting that.
So, you might use this in other situations
as well.
But you might say to your mom, at the end
of a long school day, “My teacher said a lot
about the Revolutionary War, but I didn’t
understand any of it.”
So, you’re reporting to your mom what your
teacher said.
“My teacher said a lot about the Revolutionary
War, but I was too tired and I was sleeping.”
So, you’re reporting this speech.
But what if you want to add a person?
Who is Vanessa talking to?
Who is the teacher talking to?
Well, you’re going to add the word to.
Vanessa said to her students, study every
day.
The teacher said to me to go to the office.
The teacher said to someone, Vanessa said
to someone.
It’s not as often used to use this construction.
But if you want to use said plus a person,
you need to add to.
Vanessa said to study every day, or Vanessa
said to her students to study every day.
The next one is the word tell, or in the past
tense, it is told.
This is an irregular verb.
I tell you, I told you.
You see here even in these quick examples
that you’re talking to someone directly.
So, you’re going to almost always have a person
or maybe an organization, the person you’re
talking to directly after the word tell.
We use tell when we’re speaking directly to
someone.
So, let’s take a look at a quick example.
Dan: Breaking News, Vanessa told her students
to study English every day.
Breaking news, Vanessa told her students to
study English every day.
Vanessa: You saw reporter Dan say, “Vanessa
told her students to study every day.”
Who did Vanessa talk to?
Her students?
So, here we have that person, the one who
I’m directing my conversation at, we have
it directly after this word tell.
Vanessa told her students to study every day.
She told them that daily practice is important.
Her students told her, “Thanks that really
works.”
Do you see an all of these examples, we have
that person directly after tell.
Vanessa told her students.
She told them.
They told her.
Beautiful.
Now, remember a moment ago we said that you
can say, Vanessa said to her students, but
it’s not used as much.
So, I recommend if you want to talk about
the person who you are talking to, use the
word tell.
The teacher told the students to study.
Vanessa told me that I’m doing a great job,
and you are.
Let’s go on to the next pair.
The next two words are speak and talk.
I have some good news.
The general feeling of the word speak or in
the past tense, it is spoke.
This is also an irregular verb.
This has the feeling of something formal,
maybe distant, and it almost feels like you’re
above looking down.
Maybe you’re the boss or you’re the parents
looking down.
When you speak, it needs to be in this formal,
maybe even as an authority.
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.
You might say, “I spoke to my sister about
her puppy.”
Or, “I talked to my sister about her puppy.”
When you say, “I spoke to my sister about
her puppy, it feels like you had an organized
meeting, you had a PowerPoint presentation
and you were presenting to her.
It’s very formal, it’s distant, you’re almost
looking down as you’re speaking with her.
I spoke to my sister.
And really, when you’re talking about a puppy,
that’s not the situation.
So, you can use talk, because it’s much more
natural in just daily conversation.
I talked to my sister about her puppy, great.
You might say, “The manager spoke with the
client, or the manager talked with the client.”
Because there is a manager who is an authority
and he’s talking with the client who is not
the authority, it’s perfectly fine to say
the manager spoke with the client.
But it does have a feeling of formality of
some distance.
So, if you want to convey that you had a friendly
conversation, you’re building your relationship,
you’re more on equal terms, you might want
to say, “The manager talked with the client.”
So, it just depends what you’re feeling and
what you want to convey.
You could say, “We spoke about our vacation,
or we talked about our vacation.”
What happens when you say, “We spoke about
our vacation?”
You can imagine maybe a big speech and you’re
speaking about your vacation to all of the
college and university graduates and they’re
listening to you.
Maybe they’re falling asleep because they’re
not interested in your vacation.
But here, it’s something formal, it’s distant,
you’re looking down at them.
So, if you want to talk about a familiar situation,
talk about a familiar situation, you might
say, “We talked about our vacation.”
If you’re just going to a coffee shop and
having a conversation with your friend, this
is exactly what you’re going to use.
We talked about our vacation.
You just saw me use several expressions; talk
to, talk with, talk about, speak to, speak
with, speak about, great.
We’ve got a lot of different options and remember,
speak is going to be a little more formal
or a distant and talk is going to be more
relational, more conversational.
Before we go on to the final part of this
lesson, I want to let you know that there
are some important situations that you might
want to be careful about with the words speak
and talk.
The first situation is if you say, “We need
to speak, or we need to talk.”
Both of these sentences feel a little bit
scary.
If your husband says to you, “Hey, we need
to talk.
Are you busy right now?
If Dan said that to me, I would be a little
bit scared.
What’s wrong?
What did I do?
Why is he upset?
Oh, it’s quite scary.
So, if you use, we need to talk, or even we
need to speak, make sure that you want the
other person to feel a little bit uncomfortable
because they definitely will.
We need to speak.
Why do we need to speak?
What’s the problem?
If your boss said that to you, “Excuse me,
we need to speak.
Please come to my office.”
Oh, that’s really bad news, and you might
be fired.
So, make sure that if you use, we need to
speak or we need to talk, either of these
expressions, make sure that they are for a
very serious situations, and usually when
there’s some kind of problem.
The second situation that you need to be careful
about is when you’re talking about languages.
We usually use speak to talk about the languages
that you know how to speak.
I speak English, I speak French, I don’t speak
Japanese, I don’t speak Portuguese, I don’t
speak Finnish.
I speak English.
If you want to use talk, you need to say,
“We talked in English in the meeting.
We talked in Japanese in the meeting, talked
in French in the meeting.
Make sure that you use that sentence structure,
talked in plus the language.
You can’t say, “We talked English, we talked
Spanish.”
No, that’s not going to sound natural at all.
And that’s the opposite of what you want.
Make sure that you say, “I speak English and
I speak 10 other languages.”
Wow, that’s amazing.
So, make sure that you use this correctly.
Now, I have a question for you.
In the comments below this video, I want you
to answer the question, what’s something that
your mom used to say when you were younger?
What’s something that your mom used to say
when you were younger?
Let me give you two quick examples.
You might say, “She always said to clean up
my room.
She always said to clean up my room.”
Said to clean up my room, this is reporting
what your mom used to say.
Or you could say, “She always told me to clean
up my room.”
You’re adding the person directly after tell.
She always told me to clean up my room.
All right, now it’s your turn in the comments,
answer that question, what’s something that
your mom used to say when you were younger?
I hope that you can use these accurately,
and I hope this video helped.
Thanks so much and I’ll see again next Friday
for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel
bye.
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Speaker.
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Thanks so much.
Bye.